1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates generally to capacitance sensing touch devices. More particularly, the present invention relates to capacitance sensing electrodes with one or more integrated I/O devices.
2. Description of the Related Art
There are many factors that determine the size of compact portable electronic devices such as laptops, PDAs, media players, cell phones, etc. In most cases, the size of the portable electronic device is limited by the size of the operational components used therein. These components include for example microprocessor chips, printed circuit boards, displays, memory chips, hard drives, batteries, interconnectivity circuitry, indicators, input mechanisms and the like. As such, there is a desired to make these operational components smaller and smaller while maintaining or increasing their power and functionality to perform operations as well as decreasing their cost.
The placement of these components inside the electronic device is also a factor in determining the size of the portable electronic device. For thin devices such as cell phones, PDAs and media players, stacking operational components on top of each other is limited and therefore the operational components may be placed side by side. In some cases, the operational components may even communicate through wires or flex circuits so that they may be spaced apart from one another (e.g., not stacked).
Furthermore, each operational component included in the device requires a certain number of I/O contacts. As a result, increasing the number of operational components also increases the number of I/O contacts. Large numbers of I/O contacts create design difficulties especially in portable devices that are small. For example, they may require large chips and/or additional chips in order to process the large number of I/O contacts. These chips however take up valuable space inside the device and create stack up such that the device needs to be made larger to accommodate the chip(s). Furthermore, routing the I/O through traces or wires from the operational components to the chips may further exacerbate this problem as well as create new ones.
Therefore integrated operational components are desired.